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Micro Business Update

Updates

This month I'd like to share some updates and then tell you all about how I'm handling being on vacation and working on my micro business.

Let's begin with the blog, since it has seen a lot of small changes over the past month. You may not notice them all, but i hope you like the ones you have noticed. I'm certainly happy with them.

I also managed to send a pattern off to my tech editor and I can't wait to get it back, get some test knitters on it and find an adorable baby to photograph it on.

This month has also proven very productive in furthering my knitting education. I've finished taking both Sizing Knitwear Patterns with Faina Goberstein and How to Say It: Pattern Writing for Knitters with Edie Eckman. I've learned a lot from both classes and although they take you all the way from complete beginner in these areas, I think almost anyone could learn a few great things from them. I certainly did.

And now on to the vacation bit.

Vacation
time

Ahh,
vacation time, long days with no solid plans. Wandering around cities taking in
the beauty and noise, finding rest at the local parks or on long forest walks.
Spending some much appreciated and needed time with your family. One wouldn't
think that being on vacation would prove immensely beneficial for a small
business owner, but it has for me. If you, like me, have a side hustle, being
on vacation is the best thing.

Benefits of
taking a vacation

Of course
there is the most obvious benefit of taking a vacation: it allows you, to spend
all those hours, usually devoured by your full-time gig,on your side hustle.You can of course choose to spend your
vacation working as many or more hours than you do when you are not on vacation
and no doubt your business would prosper from it, but it may lead you to ask:
What happened to long days with no solid plans?

Time, being
without a doubt the most important benefit of being on vacation, is not the
only benefit. If your side hustle is fuel by passion, I would advice strongly
against the above approach. Instead I want to share my approach with you.

Create a
plan of attack

A few days
before your vacation begins, sit down and make a list of things you would like
to achieve with regards to your small business during your vacation. Having a
list will enable you to see your progress and stay focused. It will even allow
you to relax more, since you don't have all those things, that need to get
done, floating around your head all the time.

Here are
some things you should keep in mind while writing your list:

Make sure your goals are
measurable.

Don't write: get more followers on Instagram

Do write: reach 200 followers on Instagram

Brake big goals down into
smaller steps.

If 'reach 200 followers' sounds daunting to
you, because right now you have a total of 5, then divide it into intervals of
10, 25 or 50 whatever seems manageable to you.

You should try to make the number of goals you
have relate to the amount of time you have off. You can do so by trying to
estimate how much time each goal will take to complete. That said, you can
always add more goals or delete some if you feel like it. This list is simply a
tool; it is not the boss of you.

Here is a
glimpse of my plan of attack, it originally contained 16 goals, but I've added
another goal to it and am debating deleting one or two.

Work your
plan

Now that
you clearly know what you would like to get done you are armed and ready to
face your vacation head on. What you do next is very much a question of
personality. If you are very type A you might plot every goal into your
calendar and work then in just that order. If you're more of a type B, you can
wake up each morning, look at the list and decide what to work on. You may
decide to work for x hours a day, only work certain days or maybe just work
when you feel like it.

How you
choose to work your plan of attack doesn't matter as long as you actually work
on it. Ideally you'll have all the goals crossed off by your last vacation day,
but if this isn't the case, then don't fret. You can transfer them to a new
list and keep working on them after returning to your full time gig.